Friday, September 23, 2016

Covering up British Killings

Last week the Assembly resumed following its summer break. Next week it
will be the turn of the Dáil. Normally we would be back in Leinster House by
now but a major renovation is in progress and this includes a new sound system
in the Dáil chamber. Next Tuesday it will be what passes for business as usual in
the chamber but most of the rest of the original Leinster House building will
remain out of bounds as work continues.

Among the first
items I intend to raise will be the disgraceful attitude of the British
government toward the Ballymurphy Massacre families. On Monday they met the
current British Secretary of State, James Brokenshire. He is the fourth such
Minister they have met in recent years. Their hope was that he would agree to release
the funds needed for the inquests into the murders of their family members. The
11 dead were all civilians from the Ballymurphy district, including a mother of
eight children and the local parish priest. They were killed by the British
Paras in August 1971 in the days immediately after the introduction of
internment.

It was another
fruitless meeting with another British Secretary of State. The families walked
out in frustration.John Teggart, whose father was among those killed described the meeting
as “terrible”.

It’s 45 years since the Ballymurphy Massacre. The families have been
tireless in their efforts to get to the truth. They have had some success along
the way but the new inquests that were ordered in 2011 by the Attorney General are
key to making more progress.

For this reason, there has been a deliberate policy by the British government
and its intelligence agencies to block inquests. Currently there are scores of outstanding
inquests into disputed killings by British state forces or unionist death
squads acting in collusion with those forces. It is estimated that the average
time these families have had to wait for an inquest thus far is close to 23
years.

The reality is that the British state is actively working to prevent the
truth from emerging. The Historical Enquries Team (HET), which was established
in 2005 to re-examine cases was actively blocked from accessing files held by
the PSNI and British Ministry of Defence. It was eventually closed down when a
report by the Inspectorate of Constabulary accused the HET of investigating
killings by British forces will less vigour that it was using in other cases.
The HET lost credibility as a result.

Like the HET the Police Ombudsman’s office has faced hurdles in
accessing intelligence and policing documents relating to scores of murders,
including those carried out by the infamous Glenanne Gang, which included
members of the RUC and UDR. According to a new book, The History Thieves, by
Guardian reporter Ian Cobain, the archive of documents that was painstakingly built
up by the investigations of John Stevens into collusion were handed back to the
PSNI in 2011. There are an estimated 100 tonnes of documents – 100 tonnes!!!!!

Today they sit in Seapark, a high security facility at Carrickfergus.
The archive – which the PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton called ‘The Vault’
is, according to Cobain ‘unreachable’. It includes the Stalker and Sampson
reports into the RUC’s Shoot-to-kill policy of the 1980s, as well as files on
collusion involving the UDR and the Military Reaction Force (MRF).

Cobain, whose book I will review in more detail in another blog, states
that ‘The Vault’ is guarded by the ‘Legacy Support Unit’ of the PSNI; “Many of them are former Special Branch
detectives, brought out of retirement specifically to perform this task.”

The Guardian reporter quotes Hamilton from a television interview in the
course of which the Chief Constable describes the content of the Vault. He says:
“If the Vault was to be opened, I know
there will be literally millions of documents. I’m not just talking about
intelligence documents, I’m talking about plans for covert operations, I’m
talking about minutes of meetings. My understanding is that the IRA, the UVF
and other players in this didn’t keep notes or minutes of meetings or records
of decisions. We did. And I think all of that has left us somewhat exposed.”

Is it any wonder that successive British governments have gone to
extraordinary lengths to withhold intelligence information and to obstruct
families desperately trying to get to the truth of the death of a loved one?

The Lord Chief Justice for the North Declan
Morgan has urged the British government to release the funds. He warned that
failure to do this will mean ‘further
devastation for grieving families’ and a delay of more decades before all
of the outstanding cases might be completed.

All of the North’s political parties
want inquest funding released except for the DUP. Their opposition is designed
to protect British state agencies and individual members of the RUC, its
Special Branch and a range of intelligence agencies from being held accountable
for the murder of citizens. The Irish government has a responsibility to assist
all of these families. I have raised this with the Taoiseach many times. It is
my intention to do so again.